Three Musketeers
The Three Musketeers card is unlocked from the Royal Arena (Arena 7). It spawns three single-target, medium-ranged Musketeers with both moderate hitpoints and damage. A Three Musketeers card costs 9 Elixir to deploy. Strategy *The Three Musketeers is a very risky card to play. Being a high-cost card at 9 Elixir, it is imperative to know whether or not the opponent has cards such as the Skeleton Army or Rocket to punish the player for playing the card. *The opponent can simply cast a Fireball and Zap, Fire Spirits and Zap, Poison, Fireball and The Log, Fireball and Tornado, Rocket, or Lightning on the Three Musketeers to eliminate all of them, giving them a significant Elixir advantage. **Be careful, though, your opponent may have a Minion Horde, Skeleton Army, Goblin Gang, or other swarm troops to attack you when you have used your spells. **The Three Musketeers will not be killed by a Fireball of an equal level. **Be careful when using Fireball and The Log or Fireball and Zap to kill them as the Fireball can knock the Musketeers backwards, causing one of the spells to miss. It is best to use Zap first when doing a Fireball and Zap combo to ensure that they both hit them. **Be careful when using the Lightning to counter them. It always targets the units with the highest hitpoints, so if they are using Royal Hogs as a tank, the Lightning will only target the Royal Hogs and leave all three Musketeers alive. **A well placed Ice Spirit paired with the Guards are capable of taking out the Three Musketeers for a huge 5 Elixir advantage. **When deploying the Three Musketeers, deploy them in the back of the arena to take advantage of their long deploy time and generate Elixir before they attack the enemy. It is recommended to use tanks to protect them, but unfortunately, as risky as it is, spells like Rocket and Fireball can damage the Princess Towers and simultaneously kill or weaken the Three Musketeers. A better idea is to place a tank at the rear of the arena and the Three Musketeers behind them. *Due to their long two-second deploy time, it is not wise to play them reactively as a defense. They will often let a lot of damage by before they start attacking, and your opponent can easily spell them down. *The Three Musketeers can be very powerful support for a tank like the Royal Giant, catching the opponent off guard and quickly annihilating them if no defensive cards are available. A good combo to take care of this is a Valkyrie or Barbarians then quick-drop Freeze. *The Three Musketeers deal heavy damage with a Rage, easily demolishing a Crown Tower in a few seconds. It is an effective but very risky idea to pair them with Lumberjack. It can easily take a Crown Tower if not effectively countered. However, it costs a massive 13 Elixir and may leave you unprepared for an enemy push. *It is extremely important to distract the Three Musketeers when they are spawned, as they will not change their target once they lock onto a Crown Tower, dealing devastating damage even if the player tries to destroy them. **Keep in mind that when the Three Musketeers are not distracted, deploying cheap swarm troops like Spear Goblins is very ineffective. This is because they are in a group of three and have low hitpoints; therefore they can eliminate the Spear Goblins in a single burst. **If they lock on to the player's Crown Tower, try making them re-target by pushing their hitbox away with a troop that only targets buildings like the Giant or by placing down troops in front of them and then use a Zap on them. *If you can afford to activate your opponent's King Tower (for example, if you are playing a siege deck), a quick Fireball or Poison to any Three Musketeers planted in the back can give you a huge advantage, provided you react quickly enough, but this is difficult. Rocket will not reach the King in time and Lightning will only strike two out of the three, so in these situations, it is better to wait until they approach the Princess Towers in order to gain better spell value. *A key part of most Three Musketeer decks is baiting out the opponent's heavy spell, therefore, cards like Elixir Collector and Minion Horde are very popular in this archetype. For example, an Elixir collector is tempting Fireball bait for the opponent but if he uses his Fireball on the Elixir Collector, you will be free to use the Three Musketeers without having to worry about the opponent instantly spelling them down. **However, cycle decks are able to get back to their heavy spell quickly enough to deal with your other cards, so Three Musketeers are weaker against this archetype. **Three Musketeer decks that rely on the Elixir Collector to get a positive lead are weak against decks with the space to run Earthquake, as they can get a positive elixir trade on your Elixir Collector, and still have their heavy spell for the Three Musketeers. **Be careful not to give your opponent too much spell value. If they are able to clip two or more of your bait units with one heavy spell (eg. Minion Horde + Three Musketeers), the deficit is often too large to come back from. *It is a high risk, high reward play to plant Three Musketeers in the middle of your arena. If your opponent has a heavy spell, they will be able to gain immense value on all three, but if not, your Three Musketeers are an immediate threat to your opponent. *Never try deploying four Musketeers or more unless the opponent has no area damage cards. In the case of 4 Musketeers, not only does it cost 13 Elixir, a Fireball + Zap combo can wipe them off the Arena and give the opponent a huge 7 Elixir profit. The player can, however, deploy the Three Musketeers in the middle of the arena, making them split up, and then deploy another Musketeer in the solo-musketeer side. *If the opponent has a Crown Tower destroyed on their side, it is generally not a good idea to plant the Three Musketeers in the center on their side (this is commonly referred to as the "pocket") due to their long deploy time. With defender's advantage, it's possible to counter the Three Musketeers fully with an Ice Spirit and Skeletons before they can act. * If you place a Lumberjack near the Three Musketeers the enemy can be instantly destroyed by the sheer speed and power, but be sure to pull out the Three Musketeers so as to surprise your enemy. * Although a Valkyrie can defeat a Musketeer with ease, the Three Musketeers' sheer damage per second will kill the Valkyrie before she can kill them. History *The Three Musketeers were added to the game on 29/2/16 with the March 2016 Update. *On 23/3/16, a Balance Update decreased the Three Musketeers' cost to 9 (from 10). *On 3/5/16, the May 2016 Update fixed the "range bug", decreasing the Three Musketeers' range to 6 (from 6.5) but with no change to effective range. *On 4/2/19, a Balance Update increased the Three Musketeers' cost to 10 (from 9) but also increased the Musketeer's damage by 3%. *On 6/5/19, a Balance Update decreased the Three Musketeers' cost to 9 (from 10) but also increased their deploy time to 3 seconds (from 1 second) and added a 0.15 second deploy time between each Musketeer. *On 2/12/19, a Balance Update decreased the Three Musketeers' deploy time to 2 seconds (from 3 seconds) and increased the staggered deploy delays between each Musketeer to 0.5 seconds (from 0.15 seconds). Trivia *The Three Musketeers card is the most expensive card in the game. *The name and description of the card is a reference to the classic novel, The Three Musketeers. *When compared to the player spawning 3 Musketeers individually, the Three Musketeers card is cheaper by 3 Elixir. Playing the regular Musketeer and using the Mirror on her leaves you with one less Musketeer than the 3 Musketeers for the same elixir cost. de:Drei Musketierinnen es:Trío de mosqueteras fr:Trois mousquetaires it:Tre moschettieri ru:Три мушкетёра